


Sometimes it is the Waking

by DarkShadeless



Category: Star Wars Legends: The Old Republic (Video Game)
Genre: AU ception, AU of an AU, Angst, Drama, Implied/Referenced Brainwashing, M/M, Memory Alteration, Recovery, xD yes we have come this far
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-20
Updated: 2020-11-20
Packaged: 2021-03-10 02:49:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,014
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27646402
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DarkShadeless/pseuds/DarkShadeless
Summary: Every day Yon has is a gift. Every day could be the last, the one that will end without giving him a new tomorrow. His mind is fighting his conditioning and where that will lead him no one can say, so he tries to live in the moment.As complicated as his relationship to Ven'fir is, at least they have each other.
Relationships: Male Sith Warrior/Malavai Quinn, Male Sith Warrior/Male Sith Warrior, Yon'Sar al Thum/Ven'fir Polaris
Comments: 18
Kudos: 10





	Sometimes it is the Waking

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MercuryPilgrim](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MercuryPilgrim/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Broken Mirror](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22988128) by [DarkShadeless](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DarkShadeless/pseuds/DarkShadeless). 



> This is an Alternative Universe of Broken Mirror in which Ven'fir used to be Yon's lover before the Jedi caught him. It is set towards the end of the story, so I really hope it makes sense to someone who is not living in my brain but I think it should either way.  
> You might need to know what happens in Broken Mirror to understand what is going on, so here be some spoilers for that: In Broken Mirror, Yon, the Wrath, ended up a prisoner to the Jedi some time after Ziost. They pulled a Revan on him, took his memory of who he was. When Ven'fir finally finds him, Yon has no recollection of ever being Sith. He's not who he used to be and doesn't even know the man that he once loved. Ven doesn't take that well. Eventually, they get their shit together and try to find out what happened, to varying degrees of success.  
> I've decided to go with less drama than I could have @mercurypilgrim :P Note that there is no Major Character Death tag. Have fun.
> 
> Soundtrack: The Next Screen – Jeff Russo & Jordan Gagne // Soundtrack to Altered Carbon

Every day is a gift. Every morning Yon opens his eyes and he is still himself is another day won.

He tries not to think too much of it. He knows it’s not quite the same for Ven’fir and that… it hurts. There’s no use denying it, so he tries to set that thought aside.

Ven doesn’t mean to hurt him any more than Yon wants to do the same to him but they can’t be what they are not. Or, in Yon’s case, what he was and what he isn’t… yet. Will he be what Ven needs, wishes for, eventually? Who will he become, in time? He has so many questions and so few answers about that, about what was done to him, where that will lead him.

He still can’t stand the touch of another mind pushing against his own without lashing out instinctively and he… he's unsure if it's not better that way. What good it would do, if he could? If a mindhealer could analyse what knots his mind was twisted into, trace the threads… then what?

Would they want to shore up the construct holding him together, fix whatever is leaking through from the person he used to be? Or would they want to bring him back? If they did, if they found the Wrath inside of him and brought him out… would that destroy the person he is now?

If his mind heals itself and his memories return… what will happen to _him_? Yon knows he was very different. That is all he can be sure of, that he, who he is, didn’t exist before he was created from the shards of another person. Ven’fir’s reaction to him when they met was telling.

He used to be his lover. Who would know, if not him?

If Yon tried to give Ven what he searches for every day when he looks into his eyes… would that kill him?

That is the decision that looms behind any attempt to heal his mind. Either way, someone is lost. Yon is selfishly glad for every sunrise, every minute he spends with Ven’fir, with new friends and old ones he can’t recall, even if they watch him as if he is a ghost come to life. He doesn’t want to leave, to fade away like a dream. He wants to live.

But…

If he could stop it.

If he could… stop the memories from returning.

Would he?

Ven’fir does not ask, however much he may want to, and if he did Yon would tell him he doesn’t know. That is barely half a truth. He’s making his decision, isn’t he, by doing nothing. ‘Nothing’ isn’t actually an action you can take. The galaxy will move on regardless, things still… happen.

So, perhaps he has made his choice, is making it, in inaction. Maybe he will remember, maybe he won’t. Maybe one day he will wake up and he won’t be himself anymore. Maybe Ven’fir will be happy about that. Maybe he won’t. Maybe he will mourn Yon the same way he mourned the person he used to be. Who is to say?

For now, every day is a gift and every night is a trial.

The flashbacks are worst when Yon is asleep. He still can’t recall his dreams upon waking but he knows they… change him. Sometimes he remembers things he didn’t before. The scent of Vette’s favorite flower. The taste of blood, the flicker of emergency lights. Urgency. Going somewhere, with purpose. Searching something, always searching, like a bloodhound on the trail.

Every night Ven’fir hugs him close, curls around him as if to keep him from leaving, as if he can tell Yon is slipping away by inches. He tries not to hold on too tightly, not to scare him off, but Yon is just as much a Jedi as Ven’fir is a Sith. He can _feel_ his conflicting emotions.

There’s nothing he can do but wrap his arms around his once-and-again lover in return and cling to him. He does take comfort in having him so close, in falling asleep listening to Ven’fir’s heartbeat.

Because once he does… once he does…

_Yon opens his eyes._

_He’s standing, not laying down but that makes perfect sense. Why would it be otherwise?_

_Fear waits in the wings but it hangs there, suspended, a handbreadth away as he musters the ruin he has come to in. Diffuse light falls through a hole in the ceiling, painting his side a soft gold._

_His side._

_The thought slithers through his mind, raspy and cool. Anxiety breaks through the strange trance Yon is caught in, sets his nerves alight. He whirls around. Behind him, half of the room is shrouded in shadow._

_With his heart racing in his chest Yon takes a step back. It echoes strangely. There’s something in there. Something- he knows it, in his very bones. Something is here. He can feel it._

_A flutter of motion disturbs the stillness, light glances off the empty air at the oddest angle, near blinding, and while Yon is trying to blink it out of his eyes **he** peels from the darkness. _

_The Sith. It’s him. Of course it’s him. Who else would be here?_

_He’s clad in armor, pearly white traced with blue just like the cybernetics that ate their way through the less flashy prosthetics the Order tried to give Yon instead. They had built upon the base that was already there, just like they had built Yon himself from what they dared retain._

_A few months into his escape from the enclave his original cybernetic limbs had cannibalized the replacements from the inside out to rebuild themselves, like a parasite, attached to him and inescapable._

_Yon’s heart sinks into his stomach._

_That’s what is happening, isn’t it? The Sith, he’s… he’s burning his way through him, inch by inch, hollowing him out from the inside. Until there will be nothing left. With every memory that returns Yon loses a little more ground.  
_

_The Sith takes another step forward. It has him stumbling back. There’s nowhere to go, nothing to hold him back-_

_Nothing but the cage._

_The light glances off his form in angles it shouldn’t, again, and this time Yon sees what he didn’t before. Between them, cutting the cavernous room in half, is a pane of glass as tall as the ceiling is high. The Sith has come to a halt so close his breath should fog it. Shivery with dread Yon meets his eyes, burning in the color of living flame and molten rock._

_They look back at him from his own face._

_“You have returned,” his own voice says, in measured tones._

_He has been here before. Of course he has. “I didn’t exactly get a choice.”_

_The Sith chuckles quietly. “I expect you didn’t.” But the spark of humor drains from his face slowly as he musters Yon in his turn and leaves it solemn. “Come. There is no need to be afraid.”_

_“That’s easy for you to say!” It tears itself from his throat with all the desperation he tries to let go of in his waking hours. **He** isn’t the one who stands to lose everything, **he** isn’t trying to find a way to live with dying with every second that ticks down-_

_“Is it?” The Sith’s voice is cool. Anger whispers over Yon’s senses, there and gone. A memory glances off his mind._

Rage, so much rage, beating at his shields, at him. The desperate fire that drives his other half is lashing out at Yon and burning him alive. He flinches back, screaming-

But is he? Is he the one screaming?

The Sith’s fist comes down on the glass with punishing force. It cracks, cracks, cracks but never breaks.

_Yon comes back to himself with an echo of a furious yell making his ears ring. He shrinks back, away from him and his murderous intent-_

_But it’s not real. It’s… not now. It felt so **real**._

_“You… you attacked me.” He can’t quite keep his voice steady._

_“I used to. Tried to.” It’s surreal, how calm he sounds, the wisps of anger banished as quietly as they came. Yon swallows, hard. He has met quite a few Sith now but even Darth Nox is… different. “I had to try.”_

_He doesn’t say more but he doesn’t need to. The words alone wake a new whisper, a new **memory** , buried and forgotten. Buried **here** , in this tomb right along with him. _

Don’t come. Don’t come for me, he’ll kill you. **I** 'll kill you. I can’t stop him, don’t try to save me-

_“Ven,” he whispers his name without making a conscious decision to do so. Ven. He had to try because he would have hurt- He almost- Yon’s entire being cringes away from what may have been. What almost was. “Is that why you… stopped? Because I’m not going to- I’m not going to do that, now. I won’t.” He could never. Even if Ven’fir attacked him again, half-mad with grief, Yon doesn’t know if he could bring himself to raise his lightsaber against him._

_“I know.” Cool, so very cool. There’s an expectant quality to him but that is the only echo akin to emotion the Sith wearing his face reveals to the Force. He is waiting, Yon realizes, but waiting for what?_

_It is not the first time they have been here. It is… not the first time he has made that promise. Isn’t it?_

_Yon drags a shaking hand through his hair. “Have we… we’ve had this conversation before, haven’t we?”_

_The Sith watches him, unmoving, and there is something like pity in his eyes. “We have.”_

_“I don’t remember.” Somehow the well-worn confession is more frightening in this place, more jarring. This should be his place. He shouldn’t… he shouldn’t **lose** anything that happens here. It should be his. He knows that, instinctively, as if he has hit his hand on something and didn’t… didn’t feel it. Can’t remember feeling it because someone… someone took that from him. Took **this** from him, this most private of places, tore it from his hands and made it a prison._

_“You never do.” The weight of the Sith’s eyes on him, how very calm he is, is the only thing helping Yon ground himself against the panic crawling up his spine. “Breathe.”_

_Yon gasps for air he didn’t know he needed. He tries to fight down the panic attack that is reaching for him with icy claws._

_He can remember, here. If he just tries he can remember what they **did**. How they reached into him and cut him apart-_

_“ **Breathe** ,” cuts through the flashback, coasting on the power of a Force suggestion. It’s nothing less than a command and unthinkingly, he obeys. Air shudders through his lungs. “We don’t have much time.”_

_Yes. They don’t. The urgency claws at him again. Yon tries to find the root and comes up empty handed. “What for?”_

_“Come here.” The Sith’s veneer of calm shivers a little and underneath, for just a moment, Yon can see the same desperate drive he feels himself. He takes a step closer almost against his own will. One and another._

_His hesitancy doesn’t go unnoticed. “There is nothing here you have to fear.”_

_The Sith raises a hand and lays it on the barrier between them. This close Yon can feel him, better than he could before. How curious. Distance should not make a difference, should it?_

_“So you said.” Quite honestly, Yon isn’t entirely convinced. “What exactly do you want from me?”_

_Despite the pressure resting on them, the Sith’s expression softens. “I want you to do what we need to. Stop holding back. I won’t hurt you.”_

_He looks almost gentle, like this. A memory whirls through Yon’s mind, that voice and those eyes and ‘_ I suppose this is what it took to learn how to be kind to myself _’. It’s gone as quickly as it came._

_All that remains is them, him and the Sith and urgency. “We used to be one. We should be and we will again. We **must be whole** and it will change us both, not just you. You have to remember.”_

_“Remember what?” Like a sleepwalker Yon grasps for the answer, out of reach. It was important. That’s all he can tell and he can’t say if that is his own memory shining through fog and rubble or his sense of the Force playing tricks on him. When he can’t dig it up within himself, Yon tries to find it in the Sith’s face. It’s there. If he could just find it…_

_Slowly he raises his hand too. The glass is cool to the touch, though he shouldn't get that sensation from his cybernetic fingers._

_“ **Remember**.” The air shivers with how much force the Sith puts into that word, how much conviction. “What is my name?”_

_“I-“ That question has an answer, an answer Yon should know. “I don’t-“_

_“ **Yon**.”_

_Something cracks. Yon looks up, up and up over the impossibly tall wall of glass, perfect and smooth._

_Only it’s not as perfect as it seems at first glance. There, at the very edge splinters hide in the shadows. Fracture lines crawl over the surface, still out of reach but larger than last time._

_… last time. Last time the mirror was more perfect than it is now._

_His reflection is just as mismatched as it was then. Or is it? Yon’s eyes are drawn to the Sith, to how different they are and how similar._

_Their face is the same and their hands, the ones that touch but for the glass keeping them apart, are the same now too. Both pristine, glossy white traced with blue. Aren’t his own clothes a bit darker than they should be, than they would be in the waking world? Why would a Sith wear a Jedi’s robe over his armor?_

_“Yon, what is my name?”_

_His name. His name was, “S-“_

* * *

Yon wakes with a choked off gasp. His presence in the Force flares, unfolds to what it _should_ be, what it _could_ be if he just managed to hold on to what he needs to remember-

But it’s already slipping away.

Like sand it slides through his fingers, grain by grain.

Ven’fir startles awake, too, searches for him in the dark with frantic hands that touch him so gently, as if he is afraid he will break. As if he is afraid he will not find what he is looking for, as if Yon will slip right through his fingers.

Grateful, Yon lets himself be pulled close. He sinks into his lover’s embrace, drinks him in and tries and fails not to cling to what he can’t keep a hold of.

There’s too much of that, too much and it fades so fast.

By the time Ven has scraped enough awareness together to mumble a sleep-addled “Yon?” into his hair there’s barely anything left. He’s getting better at dragging even a little bit back from the dark but it’s hard, so hard.

“I’m here,” is what Yon’Sar mutters instead of trying to put things into words he won’t recall long enough to make sense of. “Go back to sleep, love.”

* * *

He steals out of bed like a thief come dawn. Ven’fir needs his sleep and he lies awake too often as it is. It’s not like Yon’Sar will find any more of it himself. He usually doesn’t, after one of his nightmares, so instead of counting cloud-spotted nerf calves he creeps into the common room on socked feet and avails himself of their stash of hot chocolate. It’s where it has always been, where Vette had taken to hiding it after someone stole her share one too many times.

Not that it helped. The Force is good for many things, among them sniffing out coveted items.

Yon’Sar doesn’t concentrate too hard on that runaway thought, a bittersweet smile tugging at his lips. He has learned to let them come and go as they will. At least here, now, he still remembers that that isn’t something to be feared.

Maybe one day that knowledge will stay with him, too.

He settles in to watch the stars pass in front of the viewscreen, a second mug on the console and waits. Yon’Sar has gotten good at waiting, better than he ever was.

He doesn’t remember all, not even very much, even in these early hours but more every day. Enough to know that whomever he will be when he does, he won’t be the same. He won’t be who he used to be.

Lord Sar became Yon of Salshian and once what was done to him to make that happen breaks down he will be a bit of both… and neither. He should speak of that, at least with Ven’fir.

Ven, who spends every moment he can spare with him, who loves him more than anyone should, loves him so much that losing him almost killed him. Ven, whom Yon’Sar does love in return, as much as he can while he can barely recall who he himself is while he is awake.

But it is hard, to find the words and the right time. Not yet. Not when the days still belong to Yon, Yon who is terrified of what he is losing, what he is becoming. He won’t understand, not until he can remember that he doesn’t need to be afraid of himself and he shouldn’t have to weather the conflict of his lover speaking to the person he is turning into behind his back. He shouldn’t have his hurts confirmed, that Ven is just waiting for him to be someone else. Ven’fir does love Yon for his own sake. Enough pain and doubt lies buried between them. Yon’Sar will not add to it.

 _Ven_ shouldn’t have to navigate that minefield, either. So little about this situation is fair to him.

Yon’Sar sighs, eases up on the cramped emotion attached to that thought and, slowly, lets it go. Lets it slip away, the way he never would have once, an eternity ago, when he still thought to do so would diminish him. There are things in this galaxy that make you less than yourself but this isn’t one of them. He can only guess that sigh is what finally makes his visitor give up his vigil.

Malavai slips into the cockpit, too, a shadow among shadows painted in starlight. He sinks into the co-pilots chair. After a few shared moments of silence he claims the spare mug and wraps his hands around it to warm himself.

Malavai, who has not come to Ven’s bed since he took Yon to it because he can barely face what he has become, has been made. Malavai, who suffers just as much as their lover has under what separated them.

Yon’Sar watches him quietly, takes in the severe lines grief has carved into his face. He knows he should speak of what he knows is coming but… not yet. He can’t give them hope that would be half a cruelty.

So they share their early morning vigil in silence.

It’s peaceful.

Malavai raises his cup a little and inhales deeply. There’s a distinct tang to the tea that is impossibly hard to get right. Cinnamon and vanilla... and a dash of starfruit, balanced evenly so they won’t disturb the bitterness of the leaf. His lips curl faintly. “My favorite. Thank you.”

How much he is saying without speaking a word of it. Yon’Sar smiles at the soft joy in his voice. “It’s my pleasure.”

They should talk. Soon. Not yet but perhaps soon.

For now he looks out at the spots of light of the passing stars and lets his feelings take him where they will. “Do you think you will still love me when I,” ‘ _When I’ve managed to wake myself up_ ’ is on the tip of his tongue but it’s not quite right and Malavai won’t understand what he means by, ‘ _When I’ve become one with my reflection_.’ He settles on a compromise. ”When I remember more, however that turns out?”

His lover glances at him, with sharp and faintly troubled eyes that see too much but he has never minded that. There’s nothing in him he hides from him. There hasn’t been in a long time. “Always.”

Yon’Sar sighs into his mug. Who will he be when what the Jedi did to him becomes as undone as it ever will? He hardly knows it himself. He can only hope Ven’fir and Malavai will still see in him then what they did once. Time will tell.

He drinks his chocolate, relishes the sweetness of it and tries not to become unsettled with how his memory slowly untangles itself from his grasp. It’s kind of Malavai to sit with him, despite how much it hurts him to watch half of his lover slip away. The pain of it, the grief that is wound through him so tightly, pinches his mouth and carves his crow’s feet a little deeper. Yon’Sar has a moment to hope that Malavai knows how he appreciates that he stays, that he told him and just can’t recall and then-

Yon blinks, confused. He’s in the cockpit again, with no idea how he got there. There’s a half-full cup of warm chocolate in his hands and the wooziness of sleep hasn’t fully faded. He’s almost sure he remembers making that chocolate, thinking the stars would be nice to look at but… Huh.

“How long have I been sitting here?” he asks no one in particular.

Or maybe he asks _someone_ because when he looks up Quinn is watching him with those unsettling blue eyes that seem to look right through him and Yon has to suppress the urge to squirm.

After a quiet moment the Major tips his head. His face is unreadable but Yon can never quite shake the feeling that he knows more than he is saying. About what he has no idea but… something Quinn hasn’t decided to share with him. “A while. I see you have decided not to fall asleep again after all.”

“Kind of.” Yon pulls a grimace. Mornings are _not_ his best suit. “Have I had breakfast?”

He dreads to think of what he may have shovelled into his mouth while his brain was off in lala-land. Sleep-deprived Yon doesn’t always make the best decisions.

Quinn snorts. The corner of his mouth curls and Yon can never decide if that is disgust or if that means Quinn is laughing at him. Quietly. Privately. It might be the second. He looks a little soft around the edges, the ice in his eyes thawed by a degree or two. … if he is laughing at him, Yon doesn’t really mind. It makes him look less miserable than he usually does. “No. Would you like to?”

Yon’s stomach takes that moment to growl loudly. It’s so comical he has to laugh too. “That sounds wonderful. Care to join me?”

Quinn’s amusement is a quiet, wicked thing shot through with melancholy. “It would be my pleasure.”

The wording hits him strangely. Yon could swear- Has he heard that before?

It’s the strangest feeling.

No, he can’t say. The sense of deja-vu passes him by without revealing its secrets but he is too used to that. It will come back to him, or it won’t. In the meantime…

“How do you feel about oro-omelette?”

The face Quinn makes is nothing short of priceless. Yon doesn't know why the mere mention of oro-omlettes has that effect on him but they do. He ducks his head hide a smile. He's starting to get the hang of this.

Maybe things will turn out alright. Even with the uncertainty his future is mired in, he can still take his life one moment at a time and every one is as precious as the last. With moments like this one to look forward to it's not so hard.


End file.
